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California Outlaws Plastic Bags And Ignores The Scientific Evidence
Forbes ^ | 10/22/2014 | Stephen DeMaura

Posted on 10/23/2014 4:08:41 PM PDT by Rusty0604

California made history late last month in a manner that only its legislature could. ... the state became the first in the nation to outlaw plastic bags statewide.

In both environmental and fiscal measures, bag bans are unqualified failures. This ban will engender no positive outcomes for our environment and in turn only toughen the job climate. And yet it gets even worse ...

Here, greedy special interests and desperate legislators struck an agreement to allow grocers to retain all the paper bag fees in return for their support of the legislation. Projected to earn as much as $1 billion in new revenue, the grocers gladly obliged. With the help of the grocers’ lobbyists, legislators in Sacramento had the necessary air cover to ignore the environmental science and potential for dramatic job loss.

Plastic bags generate fully 80 percent less solid waste than paper bags. They require 70 percent less energy to manufacture and 91 percent less energy to recycle. They occupy 85 percent less landfill space than bulky paper alternatives.

According to a lifecycle analysis by the United Kingdom’s environmental authority, shoppers would need to reuse their reusable totes 131 times before it became more environmentally advantageous ...

But the problems with reusable bags aren’t simply limited to its gross environmental failings. They also pose a growing public health risk, as demonstrated by a particularly disturbing vignette from Oregon, where a girls soccer team was stricken by the Norovirus traced to a reusable tote.

In the seven years since San Francisco became the first American municipality to ban plastic bags in 2007, researchers have tracked a 5-percent increase in death from food-borne illness. ... According to a 2011 white paper by the International Association for Food Protection, a majority of reusable bags contain coliform bacteria.

(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: bagban
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To: Rusty0604

California is a hostile communist foreign country.


21 posted on 10/23/2014 4:51:03 PM PDT by Lazamataz (First we beat the Soviet Union. Then we became them. We have no 'news media', only a Soviet Pravda.)
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To: Rusty0604

I can see the average Californian going along with the average leftist schmuck idea... but something this insane, that affects their daily lives in such a negative way... are they all so stupid? all such sheep?

Really, there has to be some kind of explanation here.


22 posted on 10/23/2014 4:51:40 PM PDT by samtheman
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To: Rusty0604

Follow the money. Retailers are making tens of millions of dollars selling paper bags for a dime.


23 posted on 10/23/2014 4:55:44 PM PDT by Huskrrrr
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To: Rusty0604

They tired of Arkansas (WALMART) Tumbleweeds blowing across the landscape?


24 posted on 10/23/2014 5:00:57 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: FatherofFive

What do they use for dog poop?”

Maybe their dogs use the terlet.


25 posted on 10/23/2014 5:15:21 PM PDT by Grams A (The Sun will rise in the East in the morning and God is still on his throne.)
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To: Rusty0604

That’s California for you. Think of the most ignorant law
you can imagine and those tards will pass it.
“reusable totes” are a breeding ground for bacteria, the
only hope is that California bacteria is as stupid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS1J3VrxnM0


26 posted on 10/23/2014 5:15:47 PM PDT by Slambat
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To: samtheman

Dehydration?


27 posted on 10/23/2014 5:26:14 PM PDT by Rusty0604
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To: Rusty0604

Peanuts compared to their fir Ebola case where they will have to recycle the protective gear because they can’t incinerate it because of Cal. EPA rules. I assume the human waste (vomit, feces, etc.) will have to be dumped in the tunnels that cross the border from Mexico for disposal.


28 posted on 10/23/2014 5:29:46 PM PDT by RetiredTexasVet (Put lipstick on a Communist and call it a Progressive, but it's still a Communist with lipstick.)
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To: RetiredTexasVet

...their first...


29 posted on 10/23/2014 5:30:24 PM PDT by RetiredTexasVet (Put lipstick on a Communist and call it a Progressive, but it's still a Communist with lipstick.)
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To: Rusty0604

Liberalism isn’t about being right. It’s about being righteous. It is all how it makes you feel and results don’t count.


30 posted on 10/23/2014 5:31:28 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants (The cure has become worse than the disease. Support an end to the WOD now.)
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To: BenLurkin

It won’t be long before they start whining about all the trees they are cutting down to make paper bags. Then they will mandate that all shoppers use reusable cloth bags.


31 posted on 10/23/2014 5:38:53 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants (The cure has become worse than the disease. Support an end to the WOD now.)
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To: Inyo-Mono

I just bought 1000 of them for around $21, including shipping, on eBay. They’re available on Amazon, too. Search “plastic grocery bag” or “t-shirt bag”.


32 posted on 10/23/2014 5:50:28 PM PDT by Fast Moving Angel (It is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.)
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To: Rusty0604

OK, yeah, but...I FEEL so like I’m helping save the planet when I use my reusable man purse. And that’s not a diary I’m keeping, it’s a journal!


33 posted on 10/23/2014 5:51:45 PM PDT by Blue Collar Christian (quod est Latine morositate)
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To: Inyo-Mono

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-1000-T-Shirt-Carry-Out-Plastic-Bags-Retail-Grocery-Shopping-Recyclable-Bag-/171486913155?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27ed6aa283


34 posted on 10/23/2014 5:58:50 PM PDT by Politicalkiddo (Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.- John Adams)
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To: MeganC
I wish I could say I opposed this but here we live two miles from the main road and we see plastic bags on the barbwire fence all the time.

Yeah yeah it's a bummer trying to unwind them off the barbwire fence, but the uv rays and weather elements do decompose them eventually. I'll tolerate the plastic bags on fence eyesore - the paper bags are awful environmentally.
35 posted on 10/23/2014 6:17:54 PM PDT by RushingWater
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To: Rusty0604

How will they wash their reusable totes with NO WATER ?


36 posted on 10/23/2014 6:24:17 PM PDT by molson209 (Blank)
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To: Rusty0604

I really hate this state, at least its government and its newfound demographics, thanks to the courts and the rejection of Prop 187, a perfectly legal reaction to GHWB’s open border, which Clinton exacerbated with motor voter and further non-enforcement. I would never move here if I were starting a career now. I love the weather and the beauty, but if you drive a few miles to TJ, you see what it will look like soon enough.


37 posted on 10/23/2014 6:25:28 PM PDT by Defiant (4 main US grps: conservatives, useless idiots (aka RINOs), marxists and useful idiots (aka liberals))
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To: BenLurkin

Store clerks would loudly ask you “paper or plastic” to try to shame you into using plastic..........to save the trees. Now those plastic bags are blown by the wind all over the country. Trash


38 posted on 10/23/2014 6:28:55 PM PDT by CJinVA
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To: Politicalkiddo; Fast Moving Angel

Thank you!


39 posted on 10/23/2014 6:30:37 PM PDT by Inyo-Mono (NRA)
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To: Rusty0604

Somebody’s cousin has an interest in marketing paper bags. Simple as that.


40 posted on 10/23/2014 6:41:34 PM PDT by abclily
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